The multitudinous
assaults on Haiti's dignity reached a crescendo with
this weekend’s elections [28 November 2010], imposed by
foreigners for the benefit of foreigners against the
wishes of the Haitian people and even of most of the
candidates. It is as if severely wounded and sick
hospital patients—make that prison hospital
patients—were ordered to dance and sing for the pleasure
of rich visitors. As should have been expected, most
Haitians refused to perform like circus animals, on
demand.

The Haitian sham
elections for president and most of the legislature may
go down as the most bizarre and macabre exercise in
hypocrisy in the history of U.S. imperialism. Haiti’s
most popular political party—no, the ONLY political
party with a truly mass following— the
Fanmi Lavalas organization of exiled president
Jean Bertrand Aristide, was barred from running. By
the time Sunday rolled around, 12 of the 19 candidates
for president were denouncing the government for
perpetrating a “massive fraud” on the citizenry. Turnout
was probably not much more than single digits—which is
actually the usual for Haitian elections in which
Aristide’s party is not allowed to participate—an
electoral travesty equivalent to outlawing the
Democratic Party in New York City, Boston, or Chicago.

Haiti's presidential
candidates, from left: Leslie Voltaire,
Mirlande Manigat, Michel Martelly,
Charles-Henri Baker, Jean Henry Ceant,
Jacques-Edouard Alexis, Garaudy Laguerre,
Anne Marie Josette Bijou and Wilson Jeudy
react at the end of a news conference in
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Nov. 28.
Twelve of the 18 candidates endorsed a joint
statement denouncing Sunday's voting as
fraudulent and calling on their supporters
to show their anger with demonstrations
against the government and the country's
Provisional Electoral Council. However,
Manigat and Martelly later backed out of the
protest.—AOLNews

With at least 1.5
million Haitians without adequate shelter, the entire
population still in shock over the lost of 300,000 in
January’s earthquake, an economy in ruins, a
non-existent infrastructure and a raging cholera
epidemic that international observers say could spread
to 200,000 people, Haiti is the last place to stage an
election. But the most important question has been: an
election to what? There is no Haitian state to speak of,
no prize to win. Haiti is no longer a sovereign nation,
but has been reduced to a protectorate of the United
States, France and Canada, with blue-helmeted United
Nations soldiers acting as internal security. French
African colonial regimes wielded more authority in the
transition to independence than Haiti’s shell of a
government exercises, today.

Haiti is an
occupied country, the victim of multiple invasions. The
U.S. invasion of 2004 and the kidnapping and expulsion
of its president opened Haiti to United Nations
occupation—proud Haiti, stepped on and ground underfoot
by an international cast of foreign armies paid for
largely by the United States. Haitians themselves call
the country the “Republic of NGOs,” with more foreign
“aid” outfits per capita than any place in the world,
all of them doing their own thing with no accountability
to a single Haitian, including the despised, outgoing
president,
Rene
Preval. Only a fraction of the billions raised for
earthquake reconstruction have been spent, and only a
small part of that was allocated to the Haitian
government.

So, what election,
for what government? The exercise only has value for
those who paid for it, the Americans, who spent $14
million on this fraud in hopes of disguising the fact
that Haiti is a U.S. colony. The U.S. insists on
treating Sunday's results as valid, which may mean that
a singer named “Sweet Micky” who sometimes wears diapers
on stage will become the nominal head of state. And why
not? There is no Haitian state. That is something for
the Haitian people to build, once they have thrown off
the dictatorship of Washington.

Obama denounced the recent
“elections” in Burma as “neither free nor fair.” The
Haitian “elections” are also neither free nor fair. The
largest party,
Fanmi Lavalas, is excluded, as it has been in every
election since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
ousted in 2004.

Who will be able to
vote is not clear—over 1.3 million earthquake victims
are displaced, many don’t know which polling place to go
to, don’t have their IDs, and the country is in the
middle of a
cholera
outbreak that the
Center
for Disease Control (CDC) says is non-Haitian and
originated from South Asia.
John Mekalanos, a cholera expert and the chairman of
Harvard University’s microbiology department, said,
“Evidence suggests Nepalese soldiers carried the disease
when they arrived in early October following outbreaks
in their homeland.”

The mourning among
the population, legitimate disaffection with the U.N.,
coupled with the disastrous humanitarian situation and
exclusion, creates an electoral environment sure to
cause low voter turnout. This will minimize the voice of
most of the people while amplifying that of the Haitian
oligarchy, mostly sustained by
NGO and
U.S. aid funds, living in the luxurious
Petionville hills, who have their IDs and are not
displaced.

Another issue is
that whoever is elected will have so little power. The
U.N., Bill Clinton and other foreigners through the
Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC)
largely run the country but are not accountable to the
Haitian people. The senators and deputies “elected”
mostly won’t have a say in Haiti’s reconstruction, and
whoever the new president is from these exclusionary
elections will only have a veto power over the acts of
the anti-democratic, unelected
IHRC. It’s hard to imagine a lone Haitian president
finishing his term if he should actually veto a
U.N./Bill Clinton/World Bank/Haiti oligarchy initiative
made under the
IHRC.

Nations like the
U.S. have influence in Haiti largely on the basis of
promises of aid, even though they have not delivered the
bulk of that pledged aid. Similarly, big organizations
raise money in the name of devastated Haitians and have
money sitting in bank accounts earning interest almost a
year after the earthquake, while Haitians remain
homeless, living atop 98 percent of the rubble still not
removed, or dying of cholera by the thousands as a
result of their water being contaminated by U.N. troops.

Many of Haiti’s
children have been out of school for 10 months,
countless additionally traumatized from the brutal
conditions in the tent camps, their parents having lost
their jobs, everything, since the earthquake.

First, Haitian elections are supposed to
choose their new president, the entire House
of Deputies and one third of the country’s
senate. But election authorities have
illegally excluded all the candidates from
the country’s most popular political party,
Fanmi Lavalas—and other progressive
candidates. Lavalas, the party of former
Haitian President
Jean Bertrand Aristide,
has won many elections in Haiti—probably the
reason it was excluded. If this were the
U.S., this would be like holding elections
just between the Tea Party and the GOP—and
excluding all others. Few Haitians will
respect the outcome of these elections.

Haitians’ penchant for
connecting the dots and getting to the heart
of a political issue is evident from this
sign. – Photo: Ansel Herz

Second, over
1.3 million Haitian survivors are struggling to raise
their families in 1,300 tent refugee camps scattered
around Port au Prince. The broken Haitian political
system and the broken international
NGO system have
failed to provide Haitians with clean water, education,
jobs, housing or access to healthcare almost a year
after the earthquake.

Now
cholera, a
preventable and treatable disease, has taken the lives
of over 1,600 people. Some are predicting that the
infection could infect as many as 200,000 Haitians and
claim 10,000 lives. Without legitimate leaders, Haiti
cannot hope to build a society which will address these
tragedies.

Third,
because the elections are not expected to produce real
leaders, Haiti is experiencing serious protests on a
daily basis.

Protests have
occurred in
Port au Prince and
Cap
Haitien, where two people died in clashes with the
authorities.In a recent protest
in Port au Prince, demonstrators representing 14 Haitian
grassroots groups tried to stage peaceful protests. But
when U.N. peacekeeping forces arrived, they drew their
weapons on demonstrators. As the crowd fled for safety,
the U.N. and Haitian police threw teargas canisters into
the crowd and the nearby displacement camp, Champ de
Mars. Residents were taken to the hospital with injuries
from the teargas canisters.

The media has
wrongfully typecast the political demonstrations as
“civil unrest” filled with angry, drunk rioters. No one
mentions that much of the violence has been instigated
by law enforcement, not the demonstrators. Faux
elections are not going to help deliver stability.

Fourth,
political accountability has never been more important
in Haiti than right now. The Haitian government must
guide Haiti’s reconstruction and make important
decisions that will shape Haitian society for decades.
Yet many of the 3 million Haitians affected by the
earthquake are ambivalent about the elections or do not
want them to take place at all.

Fifth, the
United States has pushed and paid for these swift
elections hoping to secure a stable government to
preserve its investment in earthquake reconstruction.
But, as
Dan Beeton wrote in the LA Times , “If the Obama
administration wants to stand on the side of democracy
and human rights in Haiti, as it did in Burma, it should
support the call to postpone the elections until all
parties are allowed to run and all eligible voters are
guaranteed a vote.”

By supporting
elections that exclude legitimate political parties that
are critical of the current government, the
international community is only assuring the very social
and political unrest it hopes to avoid.

Haitians are saying
that no matter which candidates win on Nov. 28, the
political system that has failed them will not change
unless there is an election that is fair and inclusive.

They are also asking that the country undergo a
reconciliation process that includes the voices of more
than just the Haitian elite and international community.

Haiti desperately
needs legitimate leaders. . .

Bill Quigley
is legal director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights and law professor at Loyola University New
Orleans. Nicole is staff attorney at the Institute for
Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Contact Bill at
quigley77@gmail.com ]and Nicole at
Nicole@ijdh.org .

Mirlande Manigat,
the impassive former first lady, who polls
said was ahead in the race before voting
took place on Sunday. At 70 years old, she
is a steady, grandmother-like figure for
Haitians desperate for calm. Her campaign is
led by veteran politician Reynold Georges. .
. .—AOLNews

* * *
* *

Jude
Celestin, a businessman with a powerful
coach,
President Preval. Celestin's campaign
likely outspent every candidate combined.
There were airplanes coasting the clouds
with his name across the sky, and posters of
his mustached grin on every corner. . . .—AOLNews

* * *
* *

The
musician/politician, Michel Martelly,
or "Sweet Micky." His campaign, like the man
himself, couldn't seem to keep its mouth
shut this week. Martelly is led by the
political consultants at OstosSola, who take
credit for putting Mexican President Felipe
Calderon in power in 2006. . . .—AOLNews

*
* * * *

Two Candidates
Advance in Haiti Presidential Race—The Associated Press—7
December 2010—Government-backed candidate Jude
Celestin and former first lady Mirlande Manigat will
advance to a second-round of presidential voting in
Haiti, electoral officials announced Tuesday as furious
protests broke out in the capital. The matter might not
be settled in the race to lead a country wracked by a
cholera epidemic and still recovering from a devastating
Jan. 12 earthquake. The preliminary results from the
Nov. 28 election, which has been plagued by allegations
of fraud, have popular carnival singer Michel "Sweet
Micky" Martelly trailing Celestin by about 6,800
votes—less than 1 percent.—

Why does Pres. Obama
denounce the Burma unfair election process but not Haiti
upcoming unfair elections?—By Dan Beeton—Haiti is scheduled
to hold elections on Nov. 28, and nothing —neither the cholera
outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people nor the fact
that more than 1 million earthquake survivors remain
homeless—seems likely to convince the Haitian government or its
international backers that the vote should be postponed. It
should be. Why? The electoral process is rigged.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems happy to
go along with the charade. . . .In Haiti, as in Burma, several
parties, including the most popular, Fanmi Lavalas, are being kept off
the ballot in an overtly anti-democratic move. Fanmi Lavalas has won
every election it has participated in, and authorities seem determined
to prevent that from happening again. In Haiti, as in Burma, a council
handpicked and controlled by the government is overseeing the electoral
process. And in Haiti, as in Burma, the popular party's leader is kept
from rallying supporters.—LaTimes
/
Toussaint Table

Haiti Cherie, says Haiti is my beloved land
Oh I never knew that I have to leave you to understand
Just how much I miss the gallant Citadel,
Where days long ago, brave men served this country well.

Where sun is bright, or evening with soft moonlight
Shading tree, Creole maiden for company
A gentle breeze, a warm caress if you please
Work, laughter and play, yes we'll always be this way

Haiti Cherie, now I've returned to your soil so dear
Let me hear again, the things that give music to my ear.
The shepherd's horn that welcomes the rising morn
When roads overflow as crowds to Iron market go.

Where sun is bright, or evening with soft moonlight
Shading tree, Creole maiden for company
A gentle breeze, a warm caress if you please
Work, laughter and play, yes we'll always be this way

Danticat has assembled a
potent and piercing collection of essays and poems that
articulate the frustrations and sorrows of Haitians who are
now outsiders both in Haiti and in their places of refuge.
Her eloquent contributors express anger over the negative
images conjured by what Joel Dreyfuss calls "the Phrase,"
the automatic tag line "the poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere," and voice pride in Haiti's spirituality and
art. Not that there isn't much to lament, as evident in
searing essays by Jean-Robert Cadet, Barbara Sanon, and
Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel. Haiti is a profoundly complex
and alluring place, a neighbor, as Francie Latour observes,
"whose history and future are so intertwined" with the U.S.
that it must be better understood, and Danticat's revelatory
anthology is a giant step in that direction.—Donna
Seaman, Booklist

Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . . Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."